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COCKPIT CONFIDENTIAL

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UPDATE: August 16, 2018

AIRLINER ENTHUSIASTS are like birdwatchers in a lot of ways. We dress funny and we tend to own expensive binoculars. And, we’re into lists.

As I kid I was a planespotter. I’d spend entire weekends holed up in the 16th-floor observation deck at Logan Airport, logging the registration numbers of arriving and departing jets. There were books you could buy — annual global fleet directories with the registrations and specs of every commercial plane in the world, arranged alphabetically by country and airline. There were little boxes where you could check off each plane once it was “spotted,” or, you could just line through the listing with a highlighter. World Airline Fleets, I remember, was one of these books. It came from the U.K. and was edited by a fellow named Gunter Endres (who, the Interweb tells us, is still writing aviation books). Another, even bigger volume, published in Switzerland, was called J.P. Airline Fleets. The idea was to mark off as many planes as you could.

Up there on the 16th floor, things could get competitive. I’ll never forget the jealousy I felt toward a legendary Boston spotter named Barry Sobel, because he’d seen and recorded a Pakistan International 707 freighter that landed unexpectedly one weekday while I was in school.

At one point, way back when, I could have told you, with startling accuracy, the model and airline of every commercial plane I’d ever seen. Birders have tallies like this, too. They call them “life lists.” Braniff DC-8, El Al 707, Aeroflot IL-62… check, check, check. There were hundreds. Somewhere along the way I stopped keeping track, and all these years later I couldn’t begin to reconstruct such a catalog.

What I can do, however, easily and accurately, is present a slightly different life list: a record of each airplane and airline combination that I have flown aboard. It appears below. I’ve also included which classes I’ve sat in, using the traditional industry codes:

F = First
C = Business
Y = Economy

The accompanying photograph is from April, 1974. That’s my sister and me walking up the stairs to an American Airlines Boeing 727, on our way to Washington, D.C. This was the first airplane, large or small, that I ever set foot in. I’m fortunate to have the moment preserved like this.

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve left out regional jets and turboprops. Partly because they’re boring, and partly because I can’t remember them all. Highlights would include a Pan Am Express Dash-7, an Air New England FH-227, an Aeroperlas (Panama) Shorts 360, and a cargo-carrying Twin Otter in which I sat on the floor during a hop from St. Croix to San Juan.

The winners, if we can call them that, are the 737 and A320, predictably enough. That’s not very exciting, which makes it pleasing to see the 747 coming in third place. Somehow I’ve managed to fly aboard 747s from 13 different carriers.

Of all the planes that ought to be on the list, but aren’t, the most painful example is the Concorde. Years ago, when I was a regional airline pilot, British Airways used to offer a special “interline” Concorde fare to London, available only to industry employees. It cost $400, and it was what we call “positive-space” — as opposed to standby. A remarkable bargain, looking back on it. But when you’re a young pilot making twenty grand a year, $400 is a lot of money, and so I kept putting it off. I’ll do it later, I promised myself. Next year.

In the 1950s my mother (who is German) lived in Canada for a few years. She got there via Schiphol on a KLM prop-liner. In 1960, when she decided she didn’t want to stay in Canada, and needed a flight home, they had jets on the North Atlantic. But you had to fly to New York on a prop-plane first. Only BOAC had a jet directly out of Montreal, to London. My mother doesn’t remember what kind of a plane it was. However she insists that there were only four seats abreast (in economy). It must have been a Comet.
The first time I can remember being on a plane, was transatlantic on a TWA 707. A stewardess gave my brother and me metal ‘pilot’ pins. Wish I still had mine.

Wow. It’s hard to believe I’m the only poster so far who’s flown on the VC-10. It was December, 1971, a BOAC redeye from Philadelphia to London. I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more had it not been a completely full flight and had I not been in a middle seat in one of the last few rows and had there not been two intermittently screaming babies within easy earshot.

On the same trip, I flew a student charter Comet from London to Paris (worrying the entire way about metal fatigue) and another small charter jet, possibly a Caravelle, on the reverse trip. The best flight was the return trip in January from London to the US, when I had an entire row of a 747 to myself.

I’ve never managed to fly in anything of particular interest, although I got to ride Air Rarotonga’s flagship aircraft in my bathers. I’d been snorkelling in Aitutaki Atoll in the Cook Islands. Accomodation is limited at best there, so my family and I’d flown down from Rarotonga in an enormous Saab 340A. Our boat had come back from the lagoon a little late, so we were cutting it fine getting back to the airport. Nobody had time to change back into dry clothes, so we spent the ride home on our towels in wet bathers. The airline staff seemed to be ok with it though.

I just found your site. Lots of fun!
Your plane watcher-birder analogy is right on. I started airplane watching planes, especially airliners and bombers in the early 1950s. My dad took me with him on a business trip from ABQ to DEN on a Continental Air Lines Convair 340. I was hooked. We lived near the approach to the North-South runway at ABQ-Kirtland AFB (a SAC base then). Continental, Pioneer, Frontier DC-3s, Continental Convair 340s, Pioneer and TWA Martin 404s, TWA Connies and Super Connies. USAF B-36s were a special thrill. They shook the daylights out of everything as they lumbered toward the ground. I spent my Sundays at the airport from dawn to dusk. I knew all the pilots and counter and ground crews.Had the airline schedules memorized so I could recite airline and flight numbers when they flew past my back yard. I still have a Convair 340 picture on my desk. It was a great time!

It’s also given me a very pleasant hour thinking about past trips and trying to remember what I’ve been on. I don’t think I’ve got everything here, but I should at least have most of it. It really was fun remembering.

So, sorry I’m a bit late to the party, but here’s my list.

I seem to have to split it into two, because it won’t take the whole thing.

My list is much shorter then yours (I’m jealous) but I do have one very cool entry that you don’t. I was young, about 12 years old. I was crazy about planes. I had saved my paper route money. This was my first commercial flight. And the flight, from ORD to Baltimore was on a TWA Convair 880. I only wish I remembered it better.

I grew up hearing my father talk about flying the Pan Am Clipper before and during WWII when he was working for the US Treasury on foreign funds control, which involved freezing enemy assets in Asia. He island-hopped from Honolulu to Wake, Guam, and Midway on his way to Manila and Shanghai.

Great list of planes you’ve flown in, and a reminder that, despite quite a bit of business travel during their heyday, I’ve never stepped foot in a DC-10 or MD-11. (Not sure where I could even get this experience now; I still hear them grinding their way through climbout both morning and evening, but those examples are all in cargo service these days.)

Now for a future installment, with apologies if you’ve written this up already: what’s in your logbook as a student and then working pilot? And which of those did you like best and why?

I enjoy your blog and since I am much older, I go back to Mohawk Airlines in 1965 plus. They had a fly anywhere on weekends for very little so a friend and I did it more than once and worked on schemes to see how many places we could land and take off from in two days. One of them left and returned to Albany landing in DC, Pittsburgh, Ithaca and Binghamton. Another was a wider range including Mexico City, St. Lucia and Atlanta. Ah yes, to young and in college!

Patrick:
I have in a MS Works database the lsit of every flight I’ve taken since 1952 to present time. (almost 500) with planes such as the Stratocruiser, Constellation, Viscount, Trident, Tupolev 124, Ilyuschin 18, every DC except 2 and 7, Handley Page Herald, HS 748, BAC 111, Caravelle, Concorde, all Airbus models, all Boeing jets and a few more I now can’t remember. Every time I look at the list it brings back old memories. Unfortunately, I never flew on a Comet.

Geekery tends to be a Guy Thing, as for that matter — and not coincidentally seems to me — does autism. (I say this as a full-fledged geek myself.)
Culture must also have something to do with it. Britain I’ve always found admirably tolerant of eccentrics. I’ll never forget the day I landed in Liverpool in driving rain, and there they were, at the airport fence, with their notebooks out.

My list is so tiny compared to yours, but I did fly on an airline that wasn’t on yours.

Alaska on its MD80s, 737 Classics, and 737 NGs at least once in first and economy.

I have flown on Alaska so often that I can say that the 737 NGs are noisier then the 737 classics when the engines are throttled to the max at takeoff. The 737 classics had a hushed grind to them while the 737 NGs sound like a grinding buzzsaw at take off. I also have encountered that grinding buzzsaw at takeoff on the few times I flew 737 NGs on airlines outside of Alaska including Southwest, Delta, American, and United. All four of those 737s though were more Spartan compared to Alaska’s and especially Southwest. Here’s to hope Alaska, American, Southwest, and United’s 737 MAXs on order are quieter then their NGs.

Most memorable: Once again, a DC-3, 1970. Boston to Provincetown on Boston-Provincetown Airlines. (In winter they called themselves Miami-Naples Airlines). Guy sold me a ticket at a roll-away ticket booth, took my checked bag, herded us out to the plane, stood by the stairs to make sure we didn’t fall, loaded the luggage into the back of the plane, boarded, pulled the door/stairway closed, walked up to the cockpit and piloted the plane to P-town.

PBA kept those DC-3s in service into the 1980s. I remember them flying over my house on the departures out of Logan. Those old radial engines were LOUD. My parents, I remember, took a ride on one at one point, but I never did, regretfully.

I remember taking those PBA DC-3s from Logan to P-town. You climbed uphill from the back of the plane to your seat, and I remember watching the cowling fasteneres bounce up and down in flight with little streaks of oil trailing behind them. We would fly along the shore instead of out over the Bay, I suppose because there were no life vests on board. Kapok shortage I guess! I still have some PBA promotional materials tucked away somewhere, and I have a really nice print over my desk of one of their planes. I got it at the Martha’s Vienyard FBO about ten years ago and really treasure it.

What a wave of nostalgia. I was 5 when we flew on a TWA Super-G Constellation from New York to London in 1958. I remember DC3s and Fokker Friendships from my childhood in East Africa. And DC6B, DC7, and Caravelles from return trips to the US in the early to mid-60s. Of course, the 707s, 720Bs, DC8s, and that first generation of passenger jets.

I’ll never forget returning from England on a Freddy Laker L1011 on a Friday afternoon in August 1980. I had broken my foot and spent the month in England on crutches. They had stowed my crutches in the below-decks galley, and at some point crossing the Atlantic, the elevator had guillotined one of them in two. At Kennedy the crew presented me with one whole crutch and one splintered crutch, with a we’re-really-sorry look. They sent a woman with a clipboard from the terminal, who offered to write me a check. I looked at her, and said slowly and firmly, “Look. You have deprived me of the ability to ambulate. Fix that, and we’re good. So they called the Nassau County Medical Center and they sent one crutch in an ambulance, whereupon I was whisked through customs and immigration, and on my plane home to Pittsburgh.

Great list. This is not my complete list (I’m busy and no one else would care), but here are a few of the more unusual items:

DC-8
Icelandic
Saturn (or was it Jupiter? Charter out of JFK late ’60s early ’70s)

B-707
Laker Airways
(lots of others including TWA)

Hawker Siddeley Trident
BEA
CAAC

747SP
Pan Am

DC-10
Garuda

L-1011
Cathay Pacific

Classic 737
Far Eastern Transport (FAT) (so classic they were using duct tape to hold things together)
CAAC (watched oil leaking out of the starboard engine the entire way on a flight from Guangzhou to Beijing in 1984)

None of my regular commercial flights were particularly interesting. I used to love flying Tower Air (which, to the best of my knowledge, has nothing to do with our current President) as they only used 747s and one could upgrade to the upstairs cabin for only $50 extra at the gate if seats were available. I’d get to the airport four hours early to do that. I could fly SF to NY for only $99 and the extra $50. Loved it.

I have flown in a DC-3 once. My brother is an internationally known sky diver. You can see him hit the dirt at 30-40 mph when his parachutes failed here:

His team regularly practiced using a DC-3 for a time. I was, frankly, shocked it was still in service, but some are still in use by small operates for regular flights I understand. My brother wanted me to see how fun sky diving was. I road up and back, never leaving the plane until it was safely on the ground. All the ride did was to convince me I never wanted to sky dive, my brother’s sanity was highly questionable, and to carry a significant amount of insurance on him.

The plane was loud and looked like what the Millennium Falcon would look like if were a plane instead of a starship. You could see bare bolts, seams in the hull, and cables. It creaked and flexed (yes, I know that is a good thing, up to a limit, but it is still very spooky). It may have been a technical wonder in its day, but it felt like Archie’s 1920s jalopy to me.

Well I thought I was the only person who kept a “flight Log” in the bottom drawer of my desk. First flight logged was a Piper Tri-pacer when I was 14 years old. Last flight was an Airbus A380 From San Francisco to London two weeks ago as part of a 60th Birthday celebration. Only airliner I can find that Patrick has not flown on was a British Airways Trident in 1980 !

Why do you do it to us (i.e. on the OCD/Aspie spectrum…)!!!??? Of course, I got restless, and had to go to my records and checked how I compare. And I am quite pleased: 43 types, including few you do not seem to have (Trident, some Soviet planes). First flight as a kid in 1971, and kept a detailed record ever since.

All but three Economy.

No B-787 or A-350 (yet, I hope). And no MD-11 (or Concorde…, sigh). Of the “mainstream” Soviet planes, no Il-62. Don’t count gliders or helicopters.

I only I wish I could have flown on a Convair 880, VC-10, Comet IV, or a Caravelle! (My first flight was in 1978.) All the same, herewith my “life list,” which I’ve been keeping since I was eight (retrospective & eight years after my inaugural trip!) All travel Y unless otherwise noted, and RJs & regional props excluded.

Can’t come close to your list but I can claim Douglas DC-3, and the Concorde. Both of course have associated stories.

As a 25 year old woman, taking flying lessons and traveling for work, I would use downtime to visit small airports at my destination. In Charleston S.C. the crew of a DC3 converted to spray for mosquitoes​ invited me to join them on a twilight flight criss-crossing the city at low altitude. There was no jump seat so I hung out in the doorway of the cockpit for part of the flight, and for takeoff and landing I sat in the two rows of passenger seats left in the cabin. (The rest was tank).

For our 15th wedding anniversary my husband bought us one way tickets from Dulles to Orly on the Concorde. (How’s that for love?♥). We flew something cheaper on the return. I’ll never forget the mach meter on the forward bulkhead if the cabin. We cheered when it hit 1.0, and later when we hit 2.0. Passengers were invited into the cockpit to visit, and the view at 50,000 ft cruising altitude is extraordinary because you’re high enough to see the curvature of the earth (!!)

I’ve flown several dozen aircraft in my 40 years as a private pilot, and of course many more as a passenger, but those two experiences are among my most cherished memories.

Not sure what year this was….probably 1960 or so, but I flew a DC-4 from Miami back to NY (probably Idlewild). I think it was Eastern, and I remember it had 4 engines, and flew way under the cloud layer. Either the cabin pressure didn’t work or it didn’t have any!

Phew that’s a lot. I didn’t fly until I was 12 and didn’t fly again until I was 17 (after which I flew every year at least, which isn’t even that much to some people), so I lost a lot of opportunities to fly on stuff like MD80s, 757s (my two favorites), or even larger stuff like Northwest’s DC-10 fleet or Delta’s 727s. Sure the two former are still around and I’ve gotten a chance to board on them, but not like they used to be, so most flights nowadays say 737 or a320…

Not a plane spotter but memorable trips were on an Eastern “Connie” LGA to BOS in 1964, a Northeast Airlines DC 3 from Boston to Burlington, VT in 1965, two trips on Air Canada Vickers Viscounts, Sydney, NS to Halifax, then to Saint John, NB (followed by a train ride to Greenville, Maine) in 1967. Also remember LAX to BOS on a American DC 10, with a piano in the lounge ,1972, and Pan Am 707 to Bermuda from Boston and return in 1969.

I’m not quite as airliner obsessed as Patrick, so I haven’t recorded my life list, and certainly can’t remember all the airlines. I’m about Patrick’s age (born 1965.) Going to university in the USA was a good move for my life list, because I got to pick up older planes like 707, DC8, DC9, 727 which I’d otherwise have missed in my part of the world. However the pick of my life list is DC3, c1972, New Zealand’s National Airways Corporation (NAC), flown as a last-moment replacement for a larger plane which had mechanical problems (would have been a Fokker F27 Friendship or Vickers Viscount), shortly before NAC finally withdrew them from service.

My only jet not on Patrick’s list is BAe 146, which flew in New Zealand for a few years in the 1990s. I’ve flown in a 747-SP (SFO-AKL) which is also a little unusual. The cabin is startlingly shorter than you expect.

I’ve flown on the BAe-146 (Business Express). I consider it a regional jet and left it off the list. I suppose you could make the same argument for the F-28, which I did include, but the Fokker pre-dates RJs, at least as we know them today.

Nice. My only special planes were an IL86 from Aeroflot on their SVO-SNN-HAV-PTY-MGA “local bus” route, and a tour (but no flight) in an Awacs E3A B707 on the tarmac in GKE as part of an NATO “family day”…

Wow, First Class on an Eastern L-1011 must have been pretty cool. I liked the L-1011. I remember flying them on Eastern to Miami when I was a kid and my Dad was doing some consulting work for the city there.

The one I always wanted to fly – apart from Concorde which is a given – has to be the VC-10. Astonishingly fast, astonishingly smooth in flight and astonishingly beautiful. It’s the plane that BOAC didn’t want but that the passengers loved. Also, the last big plane entirely built entirely in Britain.

This is hard because I’ve not really kept a list of what I’ve flown over the last 50-some years. Here’s a guess but some airlines are missing and sometimes I may get mixed up on what the exact aircraft was. If I think of any other aircraft/airlines I’ll follow up with another post.

In 1978 I rented a Cessna 182 at Dulles Airport that I would get to using Page Aviation’s shuttle to the mid-field parking area. They had the contract to clean the Concorde when it was there, and several times I walked under its wings top get to the shuttle to go out to the plane. There was a plastic chain at the foot of the Concorde’s stairs with a sign that said, “Don’t even ask.”

I also remember a Flight International quip about a little old lady who saved up enough money to fly on the British Airways Concorde. When she entered the cabin, the captain was there to greet boarding passengers. She looked around and said, disappointed, “It looks like a regular plane.” The captain puffed up and replied, “*That*, madam, was the difficult bit!”

I have *enormous* empathy for your but-for-$400 story. In 1972 I was working on my Instrument rating at Houston Hobby airport. My instructor was Scott Grissom, son of the Mercury astronaut Gus Grissom. He called me out of the blue and asked if I wanted to fly with him to watch the last Apollo launch from the VIP section, and he’d introduce me to the other astronauts. We would take a Cessna twin and he’d give free multi-engine instruction on the way there and back. All I had to come up with was $400 for my share of the gas. But at the time I was six months into my first job and my first marriage, making a whopping $14,000 a year, with no vacation time earned and a wife who didn’t want me to be gone for a week. I just couldn’t do it. I’ve kicked myself ever since.

Wow, that was a great deal for Concorde tickets. I’m also disappointed that I didn’t get to fly on a Concorde. When they announced the retirement, I looked and found there were round trips that were Concorde one way, and then a conventional airliner the other. Even that cost more than I could justify at the time.

I flew Concorde. I was in NYC with a first class ticket back to LHR on British Airways. I went to their ticketing office and they were offering Concorde class upgrades for US$75. Included was a helicopter transfer to JFK from East 34th Street heliport sitting next to the pilot. My mother had the Concorde cabin luggage tag lying around in her living room for quite a while.

Never kept a list of all the equipment I have flown, but it would be extensive. But I remember a mid-1970s flight from Moscow to London on a JAL stretched DC8 which, seated in the back of the plane, could be seen to be flexing during taxiing!